Co-creating and managing resident-place relationships in place marketing and branding: A place brand equity approach

Kavaratzis, Mihalis ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5933-0651, Leicht, Thomas, Giovanardi, Massimo and Darler, William (2025) Co-creating and managing resident-place relationships in place marketing and branding: A place brand equity approach. European Journal of Marketing. ISSN 0309-0566 (In Press)

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Abstract

Purpose: Successful place marketing and branding necessitates a solid understanding of how residents evaluate and relate to their living environments. Using a place brand equity perspective, this study provides new insights into how the perception of valuable place aspects affects residents’ attachment with places and place-supportive attitudes. Furthermore, we investigate how residents attribute meaning and value to specific place aspects. Design/methodology/approach: Our research is based on mixed methods. In order to confirm the constituents of (resident-based) place brand equity, we first develop and test an empirical model with a cross-sample from different places (n = 597). In the second part of the research, we use semi-structured interviews (n = 32) with residents from an urban and rural environment to explore our quantitative findings on a deeper level and offer new insights into the processes through which residents attribute residential value to places. Findings: We identify that access to nature, cultural activities, social bonding, place attachment and pro-place consumption attitudes constitute dimensions of resident-based place brand equity. Our findings thus demonstrate that perceptions of valued place attributes foster residents’ attachment with places, which fuels consumer localism. We further show that the perceived value of residential places is co-created through residents’ relationships with places at the individual (micro), group (meso) and societal (macro) level. Originality: Our research provides empirical insights that were validated in a cross-place context and go beyond summative assessments of place image. We show that residents’ perceptions of valuable (leisure) place attributes enhance their affective place attachment, which plays a mediating role in explaining pro-local consumption preferences. Considering the lack of studies into how (resident-based) place brand equity is actually expressed, our research also offers new explanations of how residents’ co-create meaning and attribute value to their place of residence.